


Solstice

by holyfant



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, Hellenistic Religion & Lore
Genre: Drabble, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-26
Updated: 2013-02-26
Packaged: 2017-12-03 16:47:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/700494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holyfant/pseuds/holyfant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She sits with her hands empty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Solstice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bethbethbeth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bethbethbeth/gifts).



> Written for bethbethbeth as a holiday drabble gift.

She sits with her hands empty, her palms up in a silent offering of nothing, a strange mocking of a different time. Her fingers are relaxed and and smooth and white, the way she always goes white and almost shimmering when she comes into the dark, like a flickering flame. Hades wonders about it sometimes, about the blush that he often sees the final traces of before she reaches out and shocks him with her touch, and makes his fingers chase away her colour. It doesn't worry him anymore the way it did when it was new – the way new things always do, because he isn't used to newness, he is only used to things that have already passed, people that have already gone silent, and he isn't used to feeling unsettled by any of that. He knows by now that yes, she starts looking like a shade when she comes back down from the light, but she doesn't become one, she doesn't die – and she brings with her a warmth that he always forgets about when she leaves. 

He's asked her, once, when it was still new and she was still scared in the perpetual night of Dis, what it feels like when he touches her, and she had said, then: “I thought it would be cold, but it isn't,” and he couldn't explain why that made him shiver, and he had felt like putting his hand along the curve of her skull where her neck begins, and never ever leaving that place again.

Letting her go every time, receding from him like a cloud taking a firmer shape with every step away from him, is like shutting a door on a light he never knew he had the eyes for to see.

He watches her now. She is here. She sits, pale and translucent but the only thing that lives, and watches the offering of nothingness in her palms, her hair limp and dark around her face. It's the winter solstice, and under her skin, her blood is beating.


End file.
